Introduction Thread

[Wanderlounge]

New forum, maybe we can start off with members posting introductions?

I've been using an Afterburner since 2021 on my Skoolie (a school bus converted to a tiny home on wheels) and have used it to keep warm in more than a dozen states. We have a generic 5kw heater from Amazon and are able to keep our bus comfortable in temperatures well below freezing. Besides the wifi control and tuning abilities, my favorite feature of the AB is the frost mode setting, where I can have it automatically come on if the temperature drops below a (surprisingly high thanks to the wife) minimum temp without having to wake up and do it myself. 

We generally try to spend winters in Florida and Texas where it almost never gets into the 20s but we do have quite a few nights in the 30s here. I know, people in northern places will laugh at our pathetic tolerance for cooler temps but I'm at an age where my hands stop working and start hurting when the needle drops below 60. A particularly nice feature we've done with our bus is to plumb the heater directly to the main fuel tank, which allows us to fill up in November and not worry about fuel until spring, my AB right now says we've burned 205 gallons of fuel since we installed it.

I've helped a dozen folks install diesel heaters in bus conversions and RVs and I always recommend the AB along with them. If anyone has questions about using a chinese diesel heater or afterburner in a bus, camper, RV, etc just holler!

[afterburner]

I had a fascination with electronics since my late primary school years, building a crystal radio that could be extended step by step into a transistorised end result.
Amazing what one can achieve with a length of pine and cup head washers under screws!
I guess that's where the term "breadboard" started.

So eventually progressed into a 37 year career at the Bureau of Meteorology, most of the time spent working on the front end digitising and processing systems of the weather radars, only did that for a mere 30+ years! 
At the end as retirement was nearing, I happen chanced upon decoding the Chinese heater protocol due to curiosity as I replaced my non tunable rotary knob controller with a shiny LCD, which could be tuned.
"What's going on that blue wire?"

It took a couple of months to figure out the bytes, and formulate what was what.
I initially thought others may find this useful to do something with so published a PDF with details of what I found.

As I was prone to do, I started tinkering and had the gleeful moment of turning on the heater under my command, and well the snowball started to roll.
Then interest was piqued by a post I made on a Facebook group, and then people asked about kits.
Did a few, then gave up as they are very fiddly to prepare.
Initially I was hand building tested units, but after 100, it was getting very tedious, something had to change.

After deliberating over giving up, I bought a desktop pick and place machine and suddenly those fiddly bits were under machine control, and life eased.
Still other bits to hand solder, but no crossed eyes required (mostly!).

So, that was it, the Afterburner was born as a snotty nosed kid.
It has now matured over the last few years into a decent product that you now know.

I must especially thank the select team of assistants via the private beta messenger group I created, many of whom were early adopters of the idea.
They provided the extra monkeys to drive the extra typewriters to shake out bugs introduced by settings / actions I could never dream of combining :-)

[ChrisB22]

Nice shiny new forum, I had to join...

I am a long-time heater user and a newbie to the Afterburner. In the short time I have had it, I am honestly kicking myself that I didn't move over to it sooner. The frost mode will be perfect, as I have mine set up in my workshop. Up until now, it has been used for warmth and manually turned on and off to take the chill off of kit in there. This will be a game-changer.

The experience I've had so far has been spot on, from purchasing to asking a few questions on the FB group. I'm excited to see the group grow and become a hub for all things Afterburner.

[fxr]

I've had a CDH with an Afterburner since 2019 in our VW Westfalia Vanagon based in California, it's been brilliant.  I've also added a Bobil Vans water heater which allows us to have showers inside - with the Afterburner GPIO I/Os controlling it all.  This makes camping feasible and comfortable in all weathers - Frost Mode is a life-saver.  Many thanks to Ray and the beta group for the continuing development! 

[dbarry722]

Hi folks

New to the forum and Diesel heaters so interested in the afterburner for my shed.

Interesting times ahead ?

Declan